Shame on them
(AP) Senate Rejects Bid to Raise Minimum Wage
The Republican-controlled Senate refused Wednesday to raise the minimum wage, rejecting an election-year proposal from Democrats for the first increase in nearly a decade.
The vote was 52-46, eight short of the 60 needed.
“I don’t think the Republicans get it,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who backed a proposal for a three-step increase in the current wage floor to $7.25 an hour. The federal minimum wage has been fixed at $5.15 an hour since 1997.
Think about it: Getting paid at a rate of $5.15 an hour times 30 or even 40 hours a week, generally without benefits. How do people live?
But, of course, there’s always the well-worn GOP excuse (I guess they think it sells better than, “Hey, it’s our job to give corporate lobbyists whatever they want.)”
Republican critics said the minimum wage was a job killer, not the boon to low-wage workers portrayed by Democrats.
“This is a classic debate between two different philosophies. One philosophy believes in the marketplace, competition and entrepreneurship, and the second is a philosophy that says government knows best,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. He said France and Germany have high minimum wages, but also high unemployment.
Just out of curiosity Sen. Isakson: Those jobs you say the minimum wage will kill, they wouldn’t just happen to be the same ones George W. Bush says we need guest workers to fill, because no American wants them?
Just asking.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:48 am
and they are right! Slave economies are well known to have the most jobs – and why? Minimum Wage = 0! Sure, you have to feed the slaves but you don’t have to waste good (expensive) food…
so in the end the Confederates triumphed! And they want their slaves back. Simply because it is much easier to steal from the weak than from the rich…
oh my beloved America, what hath you become…
June 22nd, 2006 at 4:52 am
The high unemployment in the industrialized countries of the west have unemployment because the jobs these unemployed used to have are gone and are not coming back. There are people hungrier, poorer, more defenceless obliged to work for slave wages to survive another day, to slave on and on to line the pockets of these corporate leeches.
There is no longer such a thing as “national interest”, there is shareholder interest imposing its will on the world, destroying civilized society, families and human values, buying their Congressmen and Congresswomen who shameless vote themselves “raises” while denying minimum wages hikes. These valets must pay the taxis to lunch with their masters on K Street,
They are kept on a short leash–the best way to keep their priorities straight–they have hit the jack-pot.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Isn’t it mind-boggling that they are the party of “values”?